Persecution Leads Family to Ministry Work

Rose is currently a member of our media team, where she works on subtitling our programs from a local language into Arabic. This is her testimony of how she ended up here:

It was in 2007 that Rose and her family first became interested in Christianity, as a result of viewing some of our ministry’s religious television programs. She wrote a paper comparing Christianity to her religion of Islam, which she was beginning to question. She gave this paper to a neighbor, who proceeded to take it to her Imam (a teacher of Islam). Her Imam gave a message about this incident and encouraged everyone to denounce Rose. She faced persecution from her peers at school when they found out about the paper, and they told the teachers she was handing it out to schoolmates. The teachers began questioning her faith, and, as it is illegal to evangelize, the teachers then attempted to use this as a basis to get her in trouble with the authorities.

The situation continued to worsen when Rose was summoned to the police station. Because she was a minor, her father went there alone to defend her and try to get the case dismissed. Instead, they demanded that he return, and this time bring Rose with him. When they both returned, they were rushed to a room full of photos of terrorists, and interrogated about their faith in Christ. Rose’s father was afraid, but she wasn’t. She assured him that God was with them both, and greater than all of this. They both answered the questions they were asked honestly, and the Chief of Police let them go with a warning not to speak with anyone about the Gospel message again. The case eventually went to court, but it was dismissed and nothing ever came of it.

By this time, Rose and her family had all accepted Christ. After the ordeal with the police was over, some of their extended family members thought that Rose had been forced to convert to Christianity by her father. Even though she assured them that this was not true, they offered her a ‘safe’ place to live if she needed to get away from him. Rose and her parents began facing persecution from their other family, but even in the face of this Rose proceeded to share the Gospel with her cousin.

There was a village meeting held, organized and attended by these family members as one final push to bring Rose and her parents back to Islam. Three Imams attended the meeting to persuade them that Mohamed was the one true prophet. Rose’s father had prepared for this, doing extensive research into both Islam and Christianity. He eventually presented the Imams with a question that they were unable to answer, which caused concern among several in attendance. The end result was Rose and her family being forced to leave the village. Rose was in middle school at the time.

They moved to Algiers, where they began attending church, where they were all baptized. She began studying at the Timothy School in 2012, and, when finished with her studies, began working for our ministry on the media team. She has been a great blessing to the work that we do, and we are happy that she found her way here.